Low Costs And High Mobility

VoIP: Low Costs And High Mobility

People have always wanted freedom of movement, and technology is finally able to provide that. Most of us can recall the excitement that accompanied the launch of the first pagers, not to mention the giant leap in mobility when the first cell phones appeared. It was finally possible to keep in touch with people wherever you were – or wherever they were – and the world became smaller once more.

Back in those days, cell phones were only shy anticipations of what they were going to become. Today, in addition to sending and receiving calls and text messages, cell phones allow you to enjoy a variety of multimedia features: they can work as digital cameras, as mp3 players and radios, you can play video games on them, you have Internet access and the possibility to read your e-mail, or even to watch movies.

However, while the advantages of mobile phones are numerous and their features exciting, there is one disadvantage that everyone will complain about: the costs of calling are high – unjustifiably high, some say, especially when referring to roaming charges. Consequently, people are looking for ways to replace cellular telephony, while still preserving their mobility. Wireless technology has seen a rapid development in the past years, and it now seems determined to provide an alternative to cell phones.

The use of WiFi for telecommunications is possible with the help of VoIP, a technology that has changed telephony fundamentally. While traditional PSTN (public switched telephone network) services rely on electric circuits, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) is based on a different principle. Audio information is encoded into data packets which are sent over the Internet. Communication can be established between computers or between VoIP-enabled telephones (either specialized VoIP telephones that are equipped with the hardware and software necessary for handling the data packet encoding, sending, receiving, and decoding, or regular telephones connected to VoIP adapters).

In its early days, VoIP was met with skepticism, due to less than satisfactory audio quality. There were, however, many VoIP programs available for free on the Internet, which eventually caught people’s attention with one peculiar feature: they allowed free unlimited calls worldwide. Users were willing to overlook the quality issues in exchange for the convenience of calling for no charge.

The quality gradually improved, but at the same time those initially free programs starting charging small fees for the use of their services. Today, there are very few programs that allow calling for free – usually instant messengers that will let users make free PC-to-PC calls. Still, the fees charged for PC-to-phone or phone-to-phone calls are very low compared to those of conventional PSTN.

Gradually, people decided that the convenience was worth paying for. Companies such as call centres and business that relied strongly on contact with the customers were attracted by the prospect of saving money on calls and started subscribing to the service. Home users soon followed suit, contributing to the growing popularity of Internet telephony.

The next step was making VoIP mobile. That could be achieved with the help of wireless technology. Users are now able to take their VoIP phones or adapters with them and use them wherever there is a broadband connection available. The phone number stays the same and there are no roaming charges to be paid. So far, there hasn’t been much government regulation imposed on the service – mainly because, VoIP being fundamentally different from PSTN, it cannot be subject to the same laws.

The regulation that the FCC is trying to impose do not concern only taxation issues. They address far more important matters, such as 911 access, which continues to be a problem due to the incompatibility between the 911 system and VoIP.

If we look at the evolution of VoIP and WiFi so far, we have reasons to believe that the blend will be a successful one and that glitches will soon be eliminated. A new era in telecommunications is approaching its boom.

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